Twentieth anniversary of eviction from Kalahari
highlights Bushmen plight
Many Bushmen were moved to a
government resettlement camp called New Xade in
1997
© Noam
Schimmel/Survival Twenty
years ago today, hundreds
of Bushmen were ordered to abandon their homes deep
in Botswana’s Central
Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR).
This
was the first in a wave of evictions by the government,
determined to open up their ancestral homes to diamond
mining and tourism.
The
Bushmen of Xade community were given no warning and were
ordered to leave their homes immediately. They were
herded onto trucks and those who refused to do so were
told they would be shot by the army.
Along
with force, underhand tactics were employed: some
Bushman children and their teachers were moved earlier,
forcing anxious parents to follow them to the eviction
camp, New Xade, which they soon dubbed “the Place of
Death”.
Life
here, as witnessed by Survival campaigners and much of
the world’s media, was bleak. Bushmen were housed in
tents like refugees and were totally reliant on handouts
from the government.
Many
succumbed
to HIV/AIDS and alcoholism introduced by
outsiders, who flocked to the camp to profit from the
Bushmen’s meager compensation money.
From
resilient hunters and gatherers with a strong sense of
independence and identity, the Bushmen were reduced to a
life of boredom, depression and hopelessness which
continues to this day.
For
many observers, the government’s inhumane treatment of
Botswana’s first people echoed neighboring South
Africa’s apartheid regime, where black communities
were systemically evicted from their homes and dumped
into crowded slums on the outskirts of the cities.
This
was the latest chapter in centuries of persecution of
southern Africa’s Bushman peoples by white colonists and
Bantu peoples.
Bushmen celebrate the
landmark court ruling in 2006. More than a decade on,
many still languish in govenrment camps.
© Survival
International Twenty
years on, however, there have been some positive
changes. Bushmen evicted from the reserve in 2002 won
a landmark case with support from Survival
International in 2006 in Botswana’s high court. The
court ruled that they had been illegally evicted and had
the right to live and hunt in the reserve.
Today,
hundreds of Bushmen have left the hated eviction camps
and returned home. However, they continue to face
harassment, beatings, and torture by wildlife scouts when
they exercise their legal right to hunt.
As
Bushman spokesman Jumanda Gakelebone explains: “Bushmen
are not poachers. We hunt to survive, we don’t kill
animals in large quantities. We get what we want to
survive.”
Families
are still being broken up, as the government says that
only individuals who were applicants in the high court
ruling are allowed to return to the CKGR. When their children turn 18,
they have to get permits to visit their families in the
reserve. This is causing enormous distress and
hardship.
Bushmen
are worried that their land may be opened up to more
exploration without their consent. Although the diamond
mine in the Bushman community of Gope in the reserve has
been scaled back recently, last month the government
gave new
diamond prospecting licenses to a joint
Russian-British mining venture.
In
the last few years, the government has also given out
fracking licenses in the CKGR.
As
one Bushman told Survival: “Giving companies clearance
to extract natural resources is at our expense and is
against our human rights.”
Survival
is continuing to campaign for the rights of the Bushmen,
having launched a global push in 2016, to coincide with
the country’s fiftieth anniversary.
Read
this online: http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/11690
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